A.C. Wise

I’m planning on attending the Philadelphia stop of Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book Tour, which got me thinking about author readings in general. I’ve been to relatively few - fewer than I would like certainly - and each was completely unique.

The first reading I ever attended was by Maya Angelou. It was part of distinguished speaker series, and it was held in a very large theater. My seat was far enough back that she was mostly a squidgy blur on the stage, but even so - wow. She probably could have read in a space twice that size and her voice still would have touched everyone in the room.

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Irene Gallo has started a series of posts over on the Tor.com site calledSaturday Morning Cartoons. Click the link for the first two offerings in the series, Herzog and the Monsters, by Lesley Barnes and How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels, by Craig Welch. These are not your typical cartoons, but rather quiet, haunting and surreal little jaunts into “experimental animation” (for lack of a better term). The first reminded me a little bit of Dave McKean’s art style. The second reminded me of a cross between Terry Gilliam’s Python animation and Edward Gorey’s drawings. All good stuff!

Cat Rambo, guest posting on Jeff VanderMeer’s blog, recently revealed her writing process. She likes to write things out long-hand in sketch books before committing them to the computer. I’ve seen similiar posts from other authors using a variation on this method - note books, note cards, scraps of paper, etc. Many people praise the organic feel of writing with paper and pen. Not me. I hate it. My hand can’t keep up with my brain, I get impatient, my fingers cramp, and I can barely read my own lousy handwriting. To me, keyboard writing is organic - there is a rhythm, everything flows. I write long-hand as a last resort.

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IndieBound is a great website, which I found via Neil Gaiman’s journal. Among other things, it lets you find listings for independent bookstores in your neighborhood. The list is by no means exhaustive. For example, Robin’s Bookstore, which I’ve mentioned here before, didn’t show up in my Center City Philly search, but it did turn up a whole slew of bookstores that I wasn’t even aware of - several within walking distance of my workplace. This is a very dangerous knowledge for me to have, and it makes me very, very happy.

In case you missed it, yesterday was talk like a pirate day. In honor of the holiday, Shimmer made their Pirate Issue, guest edited by John Joseph Adams, available for download. Even though the offer was a one-day-only affair, the link still seems to be available, so if you act quickly, you can still get your free pirate plunder!

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Two recommendations for your reading pleasure.

Worm Within by Cat Rambo

Nora by Becca De La Rosa

Go forth and enjoy!

As a follow-up to my previous post, I wanted to talk about my favorite banned books, The Scary Stories Series collected by Alvin Schwartz. For those unfamiliar with the series, it is three volumes of collected folklore. These are old stories, campfires stories, read-under-the-covers-by-flashlight stories. They are the stories whispered in your ear by a chilly October wind. They are accompanied by gorgeously eerie illustrations by Stephen Gammell. The words and the pictures burned themselves on my impressionable brain in second grade, worked themselves deep into my psyche, and never let go.

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Disclaimer: I wrote this post long before the internets started buzzing with rumors about what Sarah Palin did or didn’t do, but now does seem like a good time to hit publish…

Banned Books Week is coming up, and so I wanted to give a shout out to some of the libraries and librarians I grew up with. During my formative years, I read a lot of books I “shouldn’t have”. My high school stocked controversial books, though their official policy for certain books with particularly disturbing subject matter required students to have a permission slip from a teacher in order to check them out. Note: they required a teacher’s permission, not a parent’s - because they trusted their students, and they trusted their students’ parents (a crazy concept, I know!). Thanks to this policy, I read Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker, a novel about female circumcision, and (believe it or not) the world didn’t come to an end. (A quick glance at their student reading list shows that they’re still recommending titles I’ve seen pop up on several banned books lists - rock on, Traf!)

My local community library let me check out books on the history of serial killers (I was a weird kid) and non-fiction books containing graphic descriptions of gay sex. In retrospect, the book about homosexuality (for the life of me, I can’t remember the title or the author) contained some pretty homophobic attitudes, but miraculously, I didn’t grow up to become a gay-basher or a serial killer - imagine that!

If either library faced pressure to ban their “questionable” books, I was blissfully unaware of it at the time. But regardless, looking back, I appreciate how awesome these libraries and librarians were and so, to them - Thank you!

Happy (almost) Banned Books week, everyone! Now, get out there and read!

Ralan’s Webstravaganza is holding their annual donation drive throughout September. Ralan’s is one of the best market resources out there for speculative fiction. The site is updated almost daily; anytime there is a new market or news on an existing market, Ralan’s is usually the first to know. If you’ve ever made a sale or had a piece of your work published based on a listing you found on Ralan.com, you should definitely consider lending your support!

The Siegel & Shuster Society was officially launched today - a foundation created by author Brad Meltzer whose aim is to save the house where Superman was created. The foundation’s goal is to raise $50,000 in order to restore and preserve the house where Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman, lived as a boy and first dreamed up the Man of Steel. His co-creator, Joe Shuster, grew up a few blocks away, but his house was in such a state of disrepair that it had to be torn down. Beyond making sure this doesn’t happen to Siegel’s house as well, the society’s hope is to eventually turn the house into a museum. You can check out the society’s website here.

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